Halley Sun Stubis

Artist Statement

Halley Sun Stubis is a storyteller. She mainly shares her narratives through handmade books, embroidery, and paintings, and enjoys focusing on intimate, hidden tales that might normally go unheard. Halley loves feminism, psychology, and family history, and works to weave all three into her artistic practice. She explores the disturbing nonchalance of everyday sexism, mental illness in the heavily female world of classical ballet, and transgenerational trauma through maternal family lines. She has been making art since she was young, and has been heavily influenced by her artist grandfather, ballet dancer grandmother, and two literature and music-loving parents; one could say that art is in her genes! She was a classically trained ballet dancer for 12 years before turning to the world of visual arts at the SMFA at Tufts, which has become a second home to her. By making artwork about people’s lives and inner narratives, she hopes to inspire people to be more empathetic in their day-to-day lives and to seek out the beautifully complex stories behind each person they encounter. At the core of Halley’s artistic practice lies her love of people. Their narratives have a huge influence on the way she lives her life, and she aims to share those perspective-changing stories with as many people as possible.

Project Statement

I have always been fascinated by the intersection of the supernatural, the coincidental, and the everyday. My first introduction to these themes were through family stories. While growing up, a secret test of friendship I imposed on people visiting my house for the first time began with begging my father to tell them the story of how he was almost born a werewolf, and then examining how they reacted to the riveting, based-on-a-true-story tale that I held so close to my heart. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that that sense of wonder I still so treasure and seek out in my everyday life tends to live in the realm of spirituality. I grew up almost completely without religion in my life, so I always found it confusing when friends would note how spiritual I was in my beliefs. At that point in my life, I was not yet aware that spirituality and religion could be separate from one another. As I’ve grown older, however, and as I’ve heard more and more stories from my closest friends and family about “magical” occurrences and coincidences too specific and meaningful to be accidental, I’ve formed my own understanding of what spirituality means to me. For me, it is heavily based on themes of life, death, love, transfiguration, and the natural world. Eerily compelling stories of crying dinner knives, lost sisters who return as butterflies, and babies inhabited by the spirits of wandering beggars have haunted my life. I am hoping to share these beautiful, sometimes terrifying, stories with you in order to inspire the same sense of awe and wonder at life that I experience when thinking of these transformative tales.  

Pictured: Cyanotypes of a significant narrative as well as embroidery, which has become a favorite medium of mine in the both physical and symbolic weaving together of tales. 

Email: hstubis@gmail.com

Instagram: @halleystubis